but to be fair politicians make a lot of promises to get your vote that they don't keep. maybe they intend to keep some of them. maybe they don't. politifact.com tracked more than 500 promises that president obama made during his campaign in 2008 when he was candidate obama. he's kept 37% of those promises. he's working on 23% of them. he's broken 16% outright and compromised on 14% to get the job done. the rest, some of you like to tweet me a lot and point out the many promises that he hasn't kept. some of those broken promises can be blamed on congress. they are stalled because your lawmakers won't do a thing about them. i have spent the last few months blaming congress for things, but it's not congress who is going to stand in the way of romney's ridiculous promise. it's the state of the u.s. economy. 12 million jobs over four years, that's what romney is promising. that's 3 million jobs a year or an average of 250,000 jobs per month every month for an entire presidency. i'm going to save my next guest some time. he'll say not only is it possible, but that it's been done before -- most recently during president clinton's second term in the late '90s. but that was a very different economy. one that was growing at an average of 4.2% a year. ours is crawling at 1.5%. you see companies need to be on solid footing to be confident enough to hire that many people. i'm all for big thinking on and off the campaign trail, but instead we get big promises that often end up being lies. i'm joined now by david gergen. cnn's senior political analyst. but i want to start with kevin hasset. he's an economic advisor to mitt romney. he's one of the authors of the "12 million jobs in four years pledge." kevin, good to see you back here. you authored this claim. please give me a solid economic basis for creating 12 million jobs in four years, three million a year. 250,000 jobs a month, on average, starting in january 2013. >> right. if you've looked at the study and it sounds like you have a strong opinion and i know you base those on your own analysis. but the fact is, there are lots of countries around the world that have been tinkering with their economic policies and then we have lots of data. what happens when they do that. so for example, governor romney proposed we cut the corporate tax rate from 35 to 25. now we're about the highest on earth. two countries have higher. but other than that, everybody has a lower rate. clinton increased it by 1% in the '90s, we were in the middle of the countries around the world. so we have had 50 countries changing every two or three years and we watch what happens when they do that and seen a lot of job creation. if you look at our study, we look at the individual proposals that governor romney made and go to the academic literature, just like if you're a sports show, you go to the videotape. and then if you add it up, you get that big number you mentioned. of course, it's very important to mention that's conditional on everything happening. everything happening that he proposed. >> right. conditional on everything happening. later in the show, i have them lined up. i have the entire u.s. tax code lined up here. all 73,000 pages of it. that's not going to change in january 2013 no matter what mitt romney wants. here's my question to you. i'm not saying it's impossible to create 250,000 jobs a month. we have done it before. i'll point that out. the issue is in order to do that, you have to change things, which means it's not going to happen in the first month or probably not going to happen in the first six months, which means you're going to have to be creating even more jobs. what economic circumstances in this country changes the day mitt romney takes office that would allow for immediate job growth at that pace? we still have slow economic growth and there are no forecasts for substantially faster economic growth over the course of the next few years. we still have a bloated and inefficient 73,000-page tax code. we still have foreclosures and edit problems. so how is it that the world somehow changes and the economic sun shines through the storm clouds because mitt romney becomes president? >> you listed a lot of the major things that we need to address and that governor romney is talking about on the stump. it's absolutely right that if governor romney is elected and then he goes into the white house and nobody wants to adopt any of his policies in congress, then one wouldn't expect that all of a sudden businesses would start investing again, people would start buying houses again and all those things that need to happen to lift the economy. but if romney is elected and he has a congress he can work with, which i think is highly likely, he's worked with democrats and the republicans in the past very successfully -- then what's going to happen is he's going to start listing the problems and knocking them down one by one. and a lot of them are kind of easy to legislate. for example, the corporate rate reduction isn't that complicated. it is not the kind of thing that will take a staff 10 to 15 months to write a bill so we can all look at it. we could cut the rate today. we could cut it from 35% to 25%. there's a heck of a lot of stuff that could happen right away. once it does, this is something we talk about in the paper. it's going to bring a lot of certainty back, which we don't have now with the tax code expiring. >> there are a lot of americans that are not going to be interested in you cutting corporate taxes without dealing th the loopholes that make up the 73,000 pages and that's the thing where it gets bogged down. kevin, you're always so cheery. >> sorry about that. >> no we like that. david gergen, politicians make very big promises in election times. sometimes after they're elected. president bush said read my lips, no new taxes. president obama and this is the one he keeps getting held to, the stimulus would make sure that unemployment never rose above 8%. some people will tell you he never said that, but his people said it and they published it. is this the kind of thing that could come back and bite a president romney? >> absolutely. just like it come back to bite mr. obama. but i do think this. kevin has got a legitimate credible argument that we could be doing a lot better than we're doing now. there are enormous number of businessmen, as you well know, who are sitting on cash right now, cash is on the sidelines because of the uncertainty over the election, uncertainly over the fiscal cliff after the elections. uncertain we're going to get serious about simpson-bowles and tackling a debt. serious about tackling a debt. if you did those things and undertook them in a bold way, you could unleash a lot more economic growth in this country. but the notion of getting 12 million jobs over four years is a great dream. but most economists will say that's a pipe dream. because the fact is, whatever we do, we are caught at the tail end of a very different kind of recession. as you know, they go back to the rogoff-reinhart analysis of this. financial recessions are deeper than you expect and they last longer than they expect and leave you a hangover. that's what we're experiencing. plus we're in a new global economy. this is hard to compete to create jobs. this is not like the '90s. i think all of us believe we can do better. >> we may disagree on the number of 12 million jobs over three months, kevin, but what we agree on is that we can do better so we want to discuss how we do better. where is the plan that backs up these claims, even if the claims don't live up to the expectations. i want to talk to you about the plan. the romney campaign says under president obama is not getting better fast enough. sounds like a great case for change. obama is not getting better fast enough. plus whether you own your home or squat in your parents basement, i'm going to show you how people are making money off the real estate recovery. you don't need a down payment or a loan. stay with us. there are a lot of warning lights and sounds vying for your attention. so we invented a warning you can feel. introducing the all-new cadillac xts. available with a patented safety alert seat. when there's danger you might not see, you're warned by a pulse in the seat. it's technology you won't find in a mercedes e-class. the all-new cadillac xts has arrived, and it's bringing the future forward. for a "back to school" clothing party. what they don't know is they're on hidden camera, and all the clothes are actually from walmart. let's see what happens. they feel really soft. i like it. i feel like i could wear this with almost anything. we love the material. so far all the material is phenomenal. these clothes are all from walmart. what? 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[ earl ] would you now? yes! walmart has great brands that make great looks. you'll love them, or your money back, guaranteed. see for yourself. ♪ see for yourself. this is new york state. we built the first railway, the first trade route to the west, the greatest empires. then, some said, we lost our edge. well today, there's a new new york state. one that's working to attract businesses and create jobs. a place where innovation meets determination... and businesses lead the world. the new new york works for business. find out how it can work for yours at thenewny.com. would you mind if to be i go ahead of you?omer. instead we had someone go ahead of him and win fifty thousand dollars. congratulations you are our one millionth customer. people don't like to miss out on money that should have been theirs. that's why at ally we have the raise your rate 2-year cd. you can get a one-time rate increase if our two-year rate goes up. if your bank makes you miss out, you need an ally. ally bank. no nonsense. just people sense. i told you why i think mitt romney's claim that he can create 12 million jobs in four years is false. now let me show you how hard it would be to do that. romney, like many other politicians, goes on the offensive here using the rising unemployment rate against president obama. >> in july unemployment went up again and the president is running out of time. under obama's economy, it's just not getting better. >> that is at best a misrepresentation of the unemployment situation. the unemployment rate is a favorite talking point amongst politicians. i have been consistent about this for many years. it's a secondary measure of the health of the labor market. it follows a group of people moving in and out of the job hunt. the monthly payroll numbers, the job creation or loss numbers, are a much clearer gauge of what we are, where we are. the total job creation number is an absolute. everyone can measure it. everyone can feel it. everyone can understand it. so let's throw that unemployment rate out the window. i have been saying this for years and look at job creation numbers. you can see the deep cuts. this was during the recession. at the height of the recession, the end of 2008, 2009 losing somewhere in the neighborhood of 800,000 jobs a month when president bush left office and president obama takes off. in 2009 you can see things started to improve. job growth fluctuated but started to improve. a lot of that had to do with the stimulus bill. we saw a peak in the beginning of 2009. in 2010 we started to see losses again, and then the end of 2010 all the way to now, we've seen about two years' worth of net job gains. my point here is, romney's promise of 12 million jobs over 48 months means this economy would have to create 250,000 jobs every single month. that's about this level over here. it doesn't happen very often. we have only seen a handful of months with that kind of job growth over the last four years. it would take a sharp, sharp turn-around in the economy to all of a sudden be at a steady pace of 250,000 jobs a month. i'm rejoined by david gergen and kevin hassett. kevin is an economic adviser to mitt romney and an author of this claim that 12 million jobs can be created in four years. kevin, you and your co-authors wrote, quote, that americans took a wrong turn in economic policy, end quote. does this mean we can see stronger job creation simply from a political policy change in washington? because as you know from being on this show before, i think there's something else at play here including this massive storm coming in from europe that washington can do very little about. >> what we have to do is focus on the things that we can have an impact on and other things could happen. europe could blow up and then there could be some months that are bad. the fact is think about the problem this way. suppose that the economy was really struggling like it is now. every policy was perfect. we had a brilliant tax code. the government had a balanced budget, everything was perfect and we weren't growing. then we'd be scratching our heads. it's like, oh, my gosh, are we going to be able to improve this. but the fact is that if you look at pretty much any of our policies it's indefensible. right? so the tax code is indefensible, deficit sin defensible, everything is broken. and that's kind of almost our best asset. if we go in and do obvious fixes, we can turn this economy around and deliver a lot more jobs than we have. think about it. president obama hasn't fixed anything. so instead of saying, being the highest corporate tax on earth is a bad thing, let's fix that, he decided to spend money on the stimulus and leave big problems untouched. i think that's why the growth is so low. >> kevin makes an interesting point. there's so much not working that if you fixed that we could see stronger job numbers. does it get you to the numbers that romney is talking about? >> no, i don't think they do. but we could do a lot better. i actually thought you were sugar coating where we are when you said we've improved a lot over the last two or three years. the fact is our economy is back to where it was in terms of gdp from before the recession and we have 5 million fewer jobs. that's not exactly impressive. we can do better than that. i do think some of the things that kevin is talking about have to be done, like tax reform, getting the deficits under control. but i also think it's true that republicans have not been very helpful. in fact, they have opposed the president when he's tried to fix some of these things. like the deficit. it's been hard for him to deal with getting the deficit under control. he wanted to go for the big bang sort of theory approach to getting the deficit under ntrol. the president ought to do more right now. bill clinton said why don't you extend the bush tax cuts for a year? do that before the elections, give people more certainty. will mitt romney join president obama in trying to do that? i don't know. kevin, i don't know how you guys -- what leadership will you show on the fiscal cliff, for example? if you're elected, at are you going to do about the fiscal cliff? >> governor romney has a very detailed plan. he goes after medicare, medicaid, social security. >> would you push that? >> he has all these things on the table. unlike obama. but the thing i disagree with, davi is that i think you're being too kind to president obama. the fact is he had a super majority in the senate. he could have done anything he wanted and he decided to take fixing things off the table. if we made a list of the problems he had when we took office, that's still there. we have a lot less money. if he had a tax reform that stimulated the economy, broaden the base, lowered the rates and stimulated that way, we wouldn't have the hangover we're having right now and we would have a much better economy because we wouldn't have so many problems. >> we can do better. the three of us are agreed. but there are complicated things. maybe the president is getting too much blame and too much credit for what he can do. love to see you author something that talks about whatongress can do and whether some of this can get done before the election. i will go on a limb and tell people to vote for congressman that make a decision to deal with these things before the election and not after. but i may grow hair before that happens. kevin, good to see you as always. kevin hassett, a romney economic advisor. david gerg gergen, thank you. coming up, thousands of pink slips going out days before the election. why it could happen just as the economic storm approaches. meineke's personal pricing on brakes. i tell mike what i can spend. i do my best to make that work. we're driving safely. and sue saved money on brakes. now that's personal pricing. i've been telling you about the fiscal cliff we are head ed over in congress refuses to act. one rocky area of the cliff is the so-called sequester, which is a stupid name for a stupid thing. $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts over ten years. half will come from defense including $55 billion alone next year. jobs will be lost. possibly more than a million defense-related jobs next year. most of them, by the way, are not government jobs. the bulk of the pink slips come om private contractors hired by uncle sam. i don't know if the number is right. but let's say it's in the ballpark. that would be equivalent, take a look at the red bars, to all of the jobs created this year. i'm not willing to take that chance and your congress shouldn't be either. defense companies aren't waiting around. they are already starting to prepare for the job losses. why? because of something called the warn act. the obama administration says the act doesn't apply here and that's triggering a political firestorm. before we get to that, you need to know what the warn act is. i want to bring in poppy harlow. tell us what the warn act is. what does it have to do with defense cuts. >> most people haven't heard of it, but it's important because if you work for a medium to big size company, this applies to you. it's technically called the worker adjustment and retraining act. it was passed back in 1988. it requires them to send out these notices 60 days in advance if they are going to close a plant or have mass layoffs. these are employerwith ov 100 workers. so if defense contractorhave to do mass layoffsthey may need to send out these notices. so what is a mass layoff? 500 or more employees, or if your company is smaller than 500 employees but 100 or larger, 33%, or one-third of your workforce. if you're going to cut that many people, you need to send these notices out. so here's where it gets political. sequester, as you said, a stupid name for a stupid thing. that would take effect if it happens on january 2nd. so what's 60 days before that? when would the notices go out? november 2nd, just a few days before election. so imagine getting a notice saying you've lost your job just as you head to the polls. the big question now is does this apply in this case. the labor department came out this week and said, no. they issued guidance which is this quote and they basically said, well, we don't know if it's going to happen so we don't know if the job cuts are going to come so it would be "inappropriate" to send out a notice. but republicans say, look, that guidance is politically motivated. take a listen. >> the only reason the administration sent out this guidance to employers earlier this week was to keep people in the dark, keep people in the dark about the impact that these defense cuts will have, until, of course, after the election. that's senate minori leader mitch mcconnell. so republicans siding with him on this. the obama administration and labor department saying you shouldn't be alarmist here. we shouldn't send out these notices because we don't know if these cuts are going to come. it's going to be up to the companies themselves whether they want to send out the notices. and as you know, if they